Wasting your time with things I find interesting, amusing, or enraging. Reinke does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations

In developed nations people are living longer. There are increases in life expectancy at birth ranging from 2.7 years in Greece to 5.1 years in Ireland, between 1990 and 2010.This longevity rise has been attributed to improving health factors, better lifestyles and medical advances. This is giving us reasons to celebrate, but what are the challenges of living longer?

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Money?

Nursing homes?

Dementia?

Cost of health care?

Seems that the Gooferment has really messed up pensions, Social Security, and now is aiming at health care.

Issue crossword puzzle books to everyone. Sudoku works for the Japanese.

Obviously, the growing costs associated with education — as evidenced by the trillion dollar student loan bubble with an unprecedented and growing 17% default rate — seems unsustainable to say the least.

A seemingly meager investment in silver made at today’s prices could eventually prevent your childrenfrom having to rely on student loan debt where they would end up owing a large amount of money by the time they graduate. This logic might even impress those investors who are not otherwise predisposed to understanding or otherwise caring about the white metal.

For example, making just a $30,000 investment in silver today for your children’s education will most likely grow in value many times over a holding period of 15 years. Silver’s future appreciation will very likely outpaceboth the consumer price inflation index, and will probably even exceed the higher rate of inflation in college education, which is currently running at ridiculous levels.

Furthermore, if your child ultimately decides not to go to college, or gets a scholarship to fund their studies instead, your prudent investment in silver will provide quite a nest egg to help them start out in life, buy their first home, etc.

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Interesting. I wonder if non-IRA/401k savers will use the bullion round to fund their future retirement.

When I look at the cost of living as denominated in silver and gold, the monetary inflation is wrung out.

Rate of return risk is an interesting concept. When using dollar denominated savings, one calculates the rate of return. But it doesn’t include the “inflation” rate. Savings today have a small nominal interest rate and an undetermined inflation rate. The Gooferment claims it is zero. It doesn’t feel that it’s zero.

So if I “save” in ounces of silver, then I know my rate of return is zero. But, the good part is that I can’t lose ground.

Money is no longer a reliable “unit of account” or “store of value”. Bullion is the “new money”.

We can no longer afford to ignore the long-term consequences of short-term thinking about our retirement programs.

Yahoo! Finance/Thinkstock – We can no longer afford to ignore the long-term consequences of short-term thinking about our retirement programs.

Large U.S. employers continue to eliminate traditional pension plans that pay retired workers a monthly lifetime pension in favor of defined contribution and hybrid plans that offer lump-sum payments at retirement, according to a recent survey HR consulting firm Towers Watson.

Among Fortune 1000 companies, only 11 percent still offer a traditional pension plan to newly hired salaried workers, down from 14 percent in 2011 and continuing a long slide from 90 percent in 1985. Conversely, in 1985 only 10 percent of those companies offered only a defined contribution plan to salaried workers — today that figure stands at 70 percent.

The primary reason for this trend has been financial: Employers don’t want the exposure to unfunded liabilities if capital markets perform poorly. At the same time, until recently employees generally hadn’t expressed a preference for traditional pension plans and, in fact, have largely embraced 401(k) and other defined contribution plans.

But this trend has its consequences in the workplace, as large numbers of baby boomers have 401(k) balances that are inadequate to fund a traditional retirement. To make matters worse, most retiring workers don’t know how to turn their nest eggs into reliable retirement income. Employers also haven’t provided much help by offering retirement income options in their defined contribution plans.

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Well, the Gooferment has been messing up the economy and distorting the employer – employee relationship since it first ERISA rule attempted to prevent Lockheed from stealing pension benefits from older aerospace engineers.

They only made the problem worse.

Suppose that they stopped giving their corporate cronies tax breaks that weren’t available to individuals and let individuals fend for themselves for “benefits”, no problem.

Threats to retirement security are everywhere. The list is topped by the recession-fueled impact on retirement confidence: People haven’t set aside nearly enough money to fund their retirements. Next on the list is the regular drumbeat from critics that the Social Security system is running out of money and won’t be able to honor its current promises to people nearing retirement. Perhaps the third stake in the heart of retirement is that people are living longer and longer, raising legitimate fears they will outlive their money.All well and good, perhaps. But these concerns have obscured the compelling arguments against ever retiring, except for physical reasons. The short list of reasons never to retire include:

1. There is no physical reason to retire.

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Yeah, sarcastically get a job and retire there. Have you ever seen <Insert favorite Gooferment agency here>?